Main menu

You are here

GH man injured, house hit in possible accidental shooting

A Grand Haven man was hit in the arm, possibly by an errant bullet fired Thursday morning from a gun range a half-mile away, according to Lt. Mark Bennett of the Ottawa County Sheriff's Department.
A house in the same Grand Haven Township subdivision was also struck by a bullet.
Sheriff's deputies were called to North Ottawa Community Hospital at 9:55 a.m. Thursday when hospital officials reported they were treating a man struck by a bullet, Bennett said.

Becky Vargo

Sep 30, 2011

The 30-year-old man was working on a house on Acacia Drive in the Cutter Park subdivision when he was injured, Bennett said.

Cutter Park is located between Lincoln and Ferris streets, west of 152nd Avenue. The shooting range is the North Ottawa Rod & Gun Club, 13084 160th Ave., just south of Ferris Street.

Bennett said at the time the shooting was reported, members of the Grand Valley State University Police Department were training at the gun club. They are cooperating fully with the investigation, he said.

Pat Twa of Ferrysburg said he received a call from his son, Adam Twa, after the younger man discovered a bullet in the dirt by some damaged siding from his house.

“They just moved in a month ago,” Pat Twa said. “They’re pretty concerned because they’re worried my granddaughter is going to get hit with a bullet.”

Pat said his son had checked around his house on Sweetbriar Drive after finding out that his neighbor, who lives a block farther away from the shooting range, had been struck by a bullet.

Adam, his wife and 3-year-old daughter are just getting settled in the house they had newly constructed, Pat said. They knew they were near the gun club when they arranged to build the house, the elder Twa said.

Still, Pat said he found it very difficult to believe a bullet could have traveled past the berm, through the trees, across a large farm field and into the subdivision.

“The odds of that happening — someone getting hit by a random bullet — just blows my mind,” he said. “The bullet would have had to been shot into the air.

Pat said the gun club is “safety oriented.”

“If you go out there, you follow the rules or you don’t go out there at all,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of respect for those guys.”

Police did not say what kind of guns were being used by the GVSU officers, and the university was referring all questions back to the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Department, pending the outcome of the investigation.

Calls to Bennett and to North Ottawa Rod and Gun Club President Mark Welch were not returned by press time.